“And this is how it works when crossing a border doesn’t feel like a crime…”
This week’s Marvellous, Electrical visits the midnight bakeries of Brisbane to tell a story of migration.
Tag: community
New Adventures at the Brisbane Writers Festival
This weekend, join me for two events at the Brisbane Writers Festival.
On Saturday 10th September at 4pm, I’ll be on the Rules of Engagement panel with Kate Pullinger and Caroline Heim, talking about the shifting relationships between institutions, artmakers, scientists, audiences, and participants.
Then, on Sunday 11th September at 11.30am, join Ellen Van Neerven, Maggie Hardy, Tamara Davis, and Maree Kimberley for Science and Belonging, a special presentation by the State Library of Queensland.
Instead of the usual panel discussion, we’ll be running a Beyond Panels session which maximises your chance to talk to our guests.
Our panel of scientists and speculative fiction writers will talk about their work with Festival visitors before leading a discussion exploring the collisions, contrasts, and common ground between speculative fiction and scientific practice.
Find out more about Rules of Engagement and Science and Belonging at the Brisbane Writers Festival website.
Townsville Adventures
Last month, I went up to Townsville in North Queensland with a team of staff from the State Library.
I worked with Townsville staff on strategy and innovation for a couple of days, then we invited around sixty people from across the region – and across the culture sector – for a day of workshops focussed on service innovation and professional development.
We discussed everything from robotics to scrub turkeys, David Bowie’s creative process to President Obama’s response to Muhammad Ali’s death, all the while thinking about how our organisations could better serve the communities we’re part of.
You’ll hear more about all of these projects in coming weeks, but for now here’s a report from attendee Sabine Carter.
Townsville was famously the setting for turn-of-the-millennium cartoon series The Powerpuff Girls – our team’s iPads are named after the lead characters Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup.
I’ll leave you today with Frank Black of the Pixies signing a Powerpuff-inspired song…
Marvellous, Electrical: Consider the Ravens
“Take only what you need…share what you have. The idea is not that radical. We teach sharing to our kids but it gets lost somewhere along the way.”
In this week’s Marvellous, Electrical, Brisbane activist Andy Paine tells of a life spent striving to live without money.
Interview with ABC Capricornia: Adventure, experience, participation
On my last trip to Rockhampton in Central Queensland, I was interviewed by Chrissy Arthur of ABC Capricornia. We talked about some of my projects in Australia and New Zealand, the role of public libraries in 2016, and this year’s upcoming Fun Palaces across Queensland and worldwide.
The best part was talking about how creativity isn’t determined by your pay grade – anyone can have a bright idea, and a role like mine is as much about listening to organisations and their communities as it is ‘thinking up cool stuff to do’.
Prepare For Trouble / Make It Double: Pokémon Go @ State Library of Queensland
The Pokémon Go game is bringing crowds of players to all kinds of public spaces, so of course museums, galleries, and libraries are working to attract these people, get them through the doors, and engage them.
It feels like every cultural institution worth its salt has used social media and friendly signage to let Pokémon players know they’re welcome. The smart team at Queensland Art Gallery / Museum of Modern Art, just next door to where I work, put out Pokémon lures at the weekend to attract extra players to the South Bank. Read more
Brisbane Writers Festival
I’m appearing twice at the Brisbane Writers Festival this September.
The program is out today in papers across the city and you can see it online at the website of organisers UPLIT.
On Saturday 10th September from 4-5pm, I’ll be at Queensland Art Gallery speaking on “The Rules of Engagement“, a panel with Kate Pullinger and Caroline Keins exploring the changing ways that artists, institutions, and communities interact.
Then on Sunday 11th September, I’ll help a panel of scientists and science-fiction writers to explore science, imagination, and identity. Join Dr Maggie Hardy, Prof Tamara Davis, Ellen van Neerven, and Dr Maree Kimberley for “Science and Belonging“, which I’ll be moderating from 11.30am-12.30pm at The Parlour in the State Library of Queensland.
Find out more at the UPLIT / Brisbane Writers Festival website.
Queensland Heritage Leaders Workshop
Back in May, I led a couple of sessions for Queensland’s Heritage Leaders Workshop, exploring ways to turn audiences into participants and expand the conversations we have at panels, keynotes, and other events.
Queensland Fun Palaces 2016
“We believe in the genius in everyone, in everyone an artist and everyone a scientist, and that creativity in community can change the world for the better.
We believe we can do this together, locally, with radical fun – and that anyone, anywhere, can make a Fun Palace.”
– Fun Palaces Manifesto
October might seem far off, but plans are underway for Fun Palaces across the Sunshine State in 2016.
What’s a Fun Palace? It’s the opportunity for a community to come together and explore the arts and sciences for free.
From fancy inner-city venues to radio stations, theatres, websites, suburban parks, swimming pools, remote tropical islands, people’s back gardens, and, yes, libraries, Fun Palaces are a way for people to get together with friends, family, neighbours, workmates, and strangers in their community, to celebrate the artist and scientist in all of us.
Theatre director Joan Littlewood and architect Cedric Price came up with the idea of Fun Palaces back in the 1960s. They imagined “a laboratory of fun” that would serve as a pop-up community venue for both art and science.
Today, Fun Palaces take place all over the world on the first weekend in October, allowing communities to be part of something bigger, setting off sparks of inspiration and connection which lead to lasting benefits for the people involved.
Fun Palaces are for all ages and all members of a community; they can be big or small, low-tech or high-tech, dramatic or domestic. In the small country town of Parkes, New South Wales, we devised a 2014 Fun Palace that let kids and adults join forces to create superhero games from recycled materials.
In 2015, I was co-producer to 11 simultaneous Fun Palaces across a 13-mile stretch of South London. Football clubs and firefighters, jewellers and businesspeople, comic stores and kickboxers, university students and lecturers, plus many more all joined forces to celebrate the arts and sciences in the London Borough of Lambeth. London’s 2015 Fun Palaces also included an online comic maker built for us by the State Library of Queensland, where I’m currently based.
If you’re a Queenslander who’d like to get involved with Fun Palaces this year, our team at the State Library can give advice and support, or connect you to venues which are already running Fun Palaces across the state – including every single public library in the city of Brisbane. We’re also equally excited if you just want to make a tiny Fun Palace in your office or your garden or your kitchen, with your mates or your neighbours or your family.
We all have something to offer, we all have something we’d like to learn or explore. If you’d like to join the adventure in Queensland, either contributing to a Fun Palace on the weekend of 1-2 October, or helping Fun Palace organisers in the run-up to their event, contact the State Library’s Signature Team.
State Library of Queensland: Something Wicked This Way Comes
How can we support regional communities without stifling their creativity?
What is the role of major cultural institutions in helping people across remote, rural, and suburban areas?
Just how many carny folk are there working at the State Library of Queensland?
This week’s edition of my column at Library as Incubator explores the work of the RAPL team at the State Library of Queensland, who work with regional and public libraries across an area three times the size of France.
matt finch / mechanical dolphin 